Whither Thou Goest, I Will Go
by OldValyriaRises
Summary: Moments from the pre-TDA lives of Emma Carstairs and her parabatai Julian - from childhood friendship to "It's complicated". (Was originally a first kiss one-shot).
1. First Kiss

**First Kiss - Los Angeles Institute, 2008**

"Can I kiss you?"

Sitting on the training room floor next to her newly minted parabatai, thirteen year old Emma Carstairs twisted sharply to face him. "_What_?"

If Julian found her tone off-putting, he didn't show it. He leaned backward, hands braced on the mat beneath him, and gave her a long, level look with his teal eyes. "I asked if I could kiss you."

"Why?" she demanded.

Julian shrugged his skinny shoulders. He'd had another growth spurt over the past couple of months, and the three inches of height he'd gained made him look even thinner than usual. "Just to see what it's like."

"But kissing is..." Emma searched her mind for the right descriptor. "Gross."

Not that she hadn't thought about it before. Not kissing Jules, exactly – but a year ago, she had drifted off into the occasional fantasy where she was kissing his brother, Mark. Emma neglected to tell him this, though. Mark was a sensitive subject around the Los Angeles Institute since the cataclysmic events of the war with Sebastian Morgenstern.

"How do you know?" said Julian, warming to the topic. "Have you ever tried it?"

Her honest answer was no. But she didn't want to give it, for some reason. "But you're my _parabatai_."

"So?"

"So... we're not supposed to kiss. It's against the rules."

"It's against the rules to be _in love_," he argued. "The Clave didn't say anything about kissing."

It was hard, Emma thought, to have a debate with Jules when he was in one of these moods. She tried, anyway. "But you're supposed to kiss people you're in love with."

Julian lifted one dark eyebrow at her. "You think that Helen was in love with anyone she kissed before Aline? Or Mark with..." He broke off suddenly, his face twisting into a grimace of pain. He hadn't meant to bring up his brother, by all accounts lost to them forever. Emma laid one hand on his shoulder, squeezing it gently in silent support.

And then she realised the implication behind his words. Mark had _kissed_ girls. It wasn't surprising – he was very good-looking – but the thought made Emma feel strangely hollow inside. Julian didn't appear to have noticed. His Blackthorn eyes were downcast, face crumpled up in pain.

Looking at Jules when he was upset was like a fist slowly squeezing Emma's heart into pulp. She would've done anything to take that look off his face.

"Alright."

"Huh?"

"You can kiss me, if you really want to."

Julian seemed to brighten considerably. "You mean it?"

"Yeah." Emma rolled her brown eyes. "I don't see what the big deal is, but fine." She swivelled to face him on the mat, shrugging her shoulders. "Let's get this over with."

Jules grinned, sitting forward. Their faces were only a couple of inches apart at this angle, and Emma could see little things about him that she'd never really noticed before. Like how long his dark eyelashes were, or the one solitary freckle on his cheek. It made her feel slightly strange.

Julian tilted his head to the left, and held it there for a few seconds. Emma watched him as he frowned, and tilted instead to the right.

"What are you doing?" she asked impatiently. "You look like a bird."

"How are you meant to tilt your head?" he asked her. "Left or right?"

Emma sighed in exasperation. "I don't _know_."

"Well, which way do girls usually tilt their heads?"

"I've never asked." She considered for a moment. "Go right."

"My right, or your right?"

"_Julian_. Do you want to do this or not?"

He smiled sheepishly, which made Emma smile in return. It was a rare occurrence these days, seeing Jules smile. When he smiled, it was like he put his entire soul into it, and Emma couldn't help but smile back. Like a reflex.

"Okay," Jules breathed. "Here goes nothing."

_Well, that's romantic, _Emma thought, before she reminded herself that it wasn't _supposed_ to be romantic. Because it was Julian, and because this was nothing more than an experiment in gratifying his ever-insatiable curiosity.

Jules leaned forward, pressing his lips against hers. They both froze there for a moment, unsure of what to do next. All Emma could see was his blue-green eyes blinking back at her from far, far too close a distance. Tentatively, Jules moved his lips against hers, and Emma was struck by how soft they were – softer than she'd expected. She was going cross-eyed trying to keep watching him, so after a second's deliberation, she closed her eyelids.

And then, somehow, they were kissing. Uncertainly at first, but the pressure increased, and Emma found that some deep-seated instinct took over. Their mouths moved against each other, and it felt easy, she thought, as natural as breathing. Julian's mouth opened, coaxing Emma's with it, and their breath mingled together, hot and tingly.

And then she felt something warm and wet sliding over her tongue. She jerked back in surprise.

Julian frowned at her questioningly. His lips were damp from where they had been kissing.

"What," she demanded, "was _that_?"

"What was what?"

"You put your tongue in my mouth!"

Jules rolled his eyes. "It's what you're supposed to do."

"Yuck." Emma thought it over for a moment. "Really?"

"Yeah."

She huffed again, thinking that she did far too much for Jules sometimes. "Okay, fine. I guess you can, then."

His eyes sparkled impishly. "This is the most unromantic kiss ever."

"Hey, _you're_ the one who said that..."

"I'm joking," he chuckled. And, Emma realised with a start, he _was_. Really, truly joking, for the first time in... well, it felt like forever. She suddenly felt the need to prolong the moment for as long as she could.

She tilted her head back to its previous position. "Quickly, then."

Jules kissed her again, and this time, when his tongue flicked into her mouth, Emma didn't jerk away. She had a brief few seconds of thinking _this is really disgusting, _before it actually started to feel okay. Better than okay, really. It felt... well, she had never felt anything quite like it.

Her arms came up to lock around Julian's shoulders, and she decided impulsively to use her own tongue, stroking his back. It sent a slight shiver through Jules, which in turn made Emma's heart hiccup in her chest. The kiss went on, and Emma was overtaken with a swooping sensation, a feeling that she had just plunged off a cliff and was hurtling towards the ground at a million miles an hour...

She broke away, gasping for air. Julian sat back, leaning on his palms again and looking fairly pleased with himself. Emma's cheeks were burning, and yet, she was shivering – she felt hot and cold at the same time.

"Well," she said, and embarrassingly discovered that her voice was shaking. "Are you happy now?"

"Hm. Yeah, I guess."

"You guess?" She rounded on him, a flame of self-doubt licking up her spine. "Didn't you enjoy it?"

"Yeah..." It was only then that Emma noticed the puzzling expression on his face. She knew Jules better than anyone else in the world, but she had never seen that look before. There was an emotion in his eyes, one she had no name for. "It was weird. But good-weird, I think."

"Good-weird," she echoed. It seemed accurate. Was the alien, twisting feeling in her insides just an effect of the kiss, then, not because of Julian himself? She hoped so. "You... don't want to do that again, do you?"

"No," Jules said decisively. "I... don't think that would be a good idea." He gave her an odd look. "I'm going to go and find Ty. See you at dinner?"

Before Emma could answer, Julian was on his feet and sweeping out of the training room. As soon as he was gone, Emma flopped back on the mat. Dejection and hurt and relief and a million other emotions she couldn't separate buzzed around her head like a swarm of bees. She took a deep breath, then another, and continued until she felt somewhere close to calm again.

Julian had been right, she thought. It would be a _terrible_ idea for that to happen again.

* * *

_A/N: Couldn't resist writing a little bit of BlackStairs feels. Why must Lady Midnight be so far away?_


	2. Smoking

**Los Angeles Institute, 2010**

"Tell me another story, Jem."

It was still strange, Emma thought, even after months of her calling him that. On the plus side, she was no longer stumbling with uncertainty over the name. For the first few weeks after he had revealed his pre-Brotherhood identity to them all, every time she had spoken to him, she had still automatically called him Zachariah and had to correct herself.

But that was not his name anymore, even if he had gone by it for more than a hundred years. Gone were the parchment robes of the Silent Brothers. Now, he wore the black gear of a normal Shadowhunter, and his dark, slanting eyes were wide open in his handsome face. He was mortal again, and he was James Carstairs – the only family Emma had left.

"What else do you want to know?" Jem leaned back against the couch cushions, smiling at her over the rim of his cup of tea. Emma had made a face the first time Jem had requested tea in the Institute. She'd never understood why people liked it. Jem had told her laughingly that an Englishman was only as good as the quality of his cups of tea, and that he had no idea why the Americans were all so obsessed with coffee, either.

"Anything." Having been her own age in nineteenth century London, Emma found Jem's stories endlessly entertaining. Everything had been so different back then. "Tell me about your friends."

Jem set his mug down on the coffee table and leaned forward to tap his fingers across the _parabatai_ rune on her chest. "Would you like to hear a story about my _parabatai_?"

"You had a _parabatai_?" A swell of sympathy rose up inside her. The idea of existing in a world without someone who had been that close to you, who you loved like your own soul, was incomprehensible to her. She didn't think she would have been able to survive the pain if Julian left her.

"I did." Jem smiled. He had a lovely smile, Emma thought. The kind that made her feel warm and safe inside. A brotherly smile. "His name was Will. William Herondale."

_That_ name sent a frisson of shock through her. "Herondale? Like Jace?"

"Yes, like Jace." He paused, tilting his head to one side. "In fact, I think he was Jace's great-great-great grandfather."

Emma's eyes widened like saucers. "What was he like? Did he look like Jace?"

"Not at all," Jem replied. "He looked, funnily enough, a lot more like Alexander Lightwood, Jace's _parabatai_. Black hair and blue eyes. But he certainly _acted_ like Jace."

"Heroic?"

"Well, that," Jem's dark eyes glittered with humour. "As well as sarcastic, impulsive, reckless... He was a very good man, but an exhausting one – at least when he was your age. He was a skilled warrior with a bigger heart than almost anyone I've ever known."

Emma noticed the tone in Jem's voice. She recognised it well. It was the same tone she used to speak of Julian, a tone that held a love that couldn't quite be put into words. "You miss him." It wasn't a question.

"Every day. But I believe that we will meet again, in the next life."

He spoke with such assured serenity that Emma didn't even question him, even though she normally would have. She was too cynical to truly believe in afterlives or reincarnation, but listening to Jem, she almost agreed with his conviction.

"Tell me about him."

"He was a law unto himself, you know. All fire and raw energy. I spent half my time trying to calm him down, or talk him out of one thing or another. One time, when we were sixteen, Will and I went down to Hyde Park. He tried to convince me to throw a poultry pie to the ducks in the pond to see if he could breed his own cannibal race. I refused, and he snatched the pie off me anyway and threw it."

Emma laughed. "Did they eat it?"

"They did, I'm sorry to say."

She laughed again, harder this time. It was easy to imagine Jem as a young Shadowhunter, standing shoulder to shoulder with a wild dark-haired boy, watching in horror as the ducks munched away. "That's awful," she managed to choke out.

"Will maintained a hatred for ducks for as long as I knew him. He said they were not to be trusted."

"Because they ate the pie?"

"Actually, his sister Cecily – Alec Lightwood's ancestor, as fate would have it – once told me that a duck had frightened him near his home in Wales when he was a little boy, and the trauma had obviously stuck."

"Is it strange?" Emma asked. "Knowing all of us now, and having grown up with our great-great-great whatevers?"

"Tessa once said to me that it was like seeing a person, and with them, all the ghosts that came before. I think she is right."

Emma thought about that for a minute. As often happened when she spoke to Jem, the idea of so much time, so much life, had her head spinning off into another dimension with the impossibility of it all.

"I think I would've liked Will Herondale," she said.

"I think you would have, too. You remind me of him, sometimes." He gave her a fond smile.

It was quite a compliment, Emma thought. She grinned. "Tell me something else."

* * *

When the sun was just starting to set, Jem declared that he had to go home to Tessa. Their relationship, Emma thought, was odd, but perfect in its own way. She walked him out of the Institute, and surprised them both by giving him a hug on the front steps. Jem grinned at her when she released him.

"I'll see you on Saturday?" Emma asked.

"You will. You should probably go and find Julian now. Doubtless he's in need of a moment's rest from all of those siblings of his."

She chuckled. Julian had taken it upon himself recently to help train Livvy, Tiberius and Dru. The three of them combined were packed with enough energy and drama to tire out a whole army of Shadowhunters, let alone one fifteen year old boy. "Probably. Bye, Jem."

"Good night, Emma."

She watched him walk away down the long drive until he disappeared beyond the gate. Turning back to go into the Institute, she caught sight of movement in her peripheral vision. Emma froze, squinting curiously into the orangey sunset. All she could see was a silhouette leaning up against the corner of the huge building. A tall, lanky and very familiar silhouette. She jumped down the flight of steps and broke into a jog in his direction.

Julian came into proper view when she was a few feet away. He had one leg bent up on the wall, blue-green eyes gazing off into the horizon, and in his left hand...

"Are you _smoking_?" Emma demanded incredulously.

Jules jumped, a guilty look flashing across his face. He didn't attempt to hide the cigarette, but he didn't quite look her in the eyes when he answered, "Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because I want to."

Propping her hands on her hips, Emma shot him a narrow glare. "That's stupid. You know it's bad for you!"

Julian looked as though he was about to roll his eyes at her, but a glance at her stormy expression made him catch himself just in time. "Chill, Em. It's not a big deal."

"It is a big deal!" she expostulated. "Does Arthur know?"

"No," he said reasonably. "Do you plan on telling him?"

Emma ground her teeth together. Jules knew fine well that she'd never purposefully get him into trouble, even if he was doing something moronic. "Aren't you worried about your health?"

Jules shrugged. "I'm a Shadowhunter. Odds are I won't live long enough to suffer any of the detrimental health stuff."

Emma's vision flared briefly white at that horrendous thought. The Nephilim had to deal with sudden death all the time, she knew that, but never in a million years did she consider it happening to Julian. She swallowed back bile.

"And if you do? What happens if you get cancer?"

Jules brought the cigarette up to his mouth, took a long draw, and expelled a stream of smoke. "I guess I'll worry about that if it happens."

Seized by a sudden violent impulse, Emma darted forwards and snatched the cigarette from his hand. Before Julian could do more than squawk in protest, she had thrown it to the ground and crushed it under the heel of her shoe. Bright spots of angry colour burned in her cheeks as she glared up at him, daring him to object.

"Those things are expensive," he sighed.

"And idiotic. You're not smoking anymore."

Jules raised his eyebrows. "Oh, I'm not? Who made you the boss of me?" But he was smiling. Even after she'd just ruined his smoke break, even after she'd lectured and yelled at him, Julian could never really be angry at her.

Emma couldn't cool her jets quite so quickly, so there was still a waspish edge to her voice when she answered him. "Wow, you're slow, Jules. I've _always_ been the boss of you."

He grinned wider still, in a bright, _Julian_ sort of way. "You're probably right."

"Don't let me see you smoking again, Jules. Promise?"

"I can promise I won't let you see," he said, and ducked the swipe she aimed at his head with an agility that proved he had been expecting it. He stepped up close, twining his hands with hers and forcing them down to her sides, gently but firmly. His eyes were vivid teal when he looked down at her from this distance. "Emma, calm down. It's all okay."

She took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing the anger right out of herself. Julian studied her eyes carefully, and when he was sure she wouldn't swing for him again, released her from his grasp. Neither of them moved away, though, and after a second, Emma leaned forward to rest her forehead on his shoulder.

"I just don't ever want to lose you," she confessed into the material of his black shirt.

His arms came up around her, holding her to him. Emma could feel his heart beating under his clothes, steady and reassuring. "You won't lose me. Me and you, Em, we're forever. And that's a promise I _can_ make."

She didn't know how long they stood like that, with their arms around each other. Long enough for her ire to completely drain away. Long enough for the sun to sink over the horizon, turning the landscape a purplish-blue. The only sounds were their synchronized breaths and the distant ebb and flow of the tide.

Emma thought of Jem's description of Will Herondale. _All fire and raw energy_. Those same words made her think of Jace, too, and then - a bit - of herself. And as she thought of Jem and Will, and Jace and Alec, Emma couldn't help but compare their dynamics to hers and Julian's. There was one thing they all had in common, she thought.

If life were an ocean, in each pair of _parabatai_ there was one who calmed the waters and one who made the waves.

* * *

_A/N: So I decided to extend this one-shot into a sort of drabble fic centering around the adorableness that is BlackStairs. I have a few more chapters planned after this one, and they should be up in the next few days. _

_~OVR_


	3. Bet

**Los Angeles Institute, 2009**

Emma centred her feet on the mat, keeping them hips-width apart, and twirled the dagger in her fingers. Zachariah had been teaching her the finer points of knife throwing over the past few weeks, and she had to admit, she was getting pretty good at it.

Of course, her audience today wasn't doing wonders for her concentration. She took a deep breath, forcing the spectators from her mind. A good knife throw, Zachariah had told her, started from behind the body. Exhaling, Emma pulled her wrist back and let the dagger fly. It sailed end over end across the room, before burying itself in the centre of the painted target on the opposite wall.

Behind her, Julian whooped in celebration.

"Not bad, Carstairs," came a lazy drawl that made her heart beat faster. "Not bad at all."

Emma spun on her heels to face the people watching her. Julian sat on the bench below the weapons cabinet, his legs pulled up lotus-style. Beside him sat a petite, pretty girl with long, red hair and a wry smile – Clarissa Fairchild, of the New York Institute. And lounging against the wall, the only one apart from Emma that was standing; Clary's blond god of a boyfriend, Jace Herondale.

It was Jace who had spoken, grinning lopsidedly in Emma's direction with enough spark in his golden eyes to make her swoon. She attempted a smile in response, but she was fairly certain that she looked too star-struck to manage it. Jace and Clary had come to Los Angeles for a week-long visit, and though they had been in the Institute for two days already, Emma still couldn't get over their presence.

Well, Jace's presence, mostly.

"Who taught you to throw like that?" Clary asked. Her eyes were green as new grass shoots, full of curiosity and kindness. Emma liked Clary, had liked her ever since she had chased after her to check she was okay on the day that she fled from the Council room in Idris, but she couldn't help a queasy sense of jealousy at the fact that Jace was hers.

Not that Emma expected that she, at fourteen, would have a chance with a nearly twenty-year old man, but at least she could dream. Seeing Jace and Clary together, though, seeing the absolute rightness of them as a couple, was enough to kill Emma's fantasies stone-dead.

"Brother Zachariah," Emma answered promptly. "Or, well, just Zachariah, I guess."

Nobody could quite wrap their heads around the transition Zachariah had made, even two years on. It was unheard of.

"The man can throw a knife," Jace said with a grin. "Clearly. You have great technique, Emma."

She flushed at his compliment. "Thanks."

Julian had an uncharacteristically sour look on his face when Emma's gaze landed on him. His eyes were fixed, not on her, but on Jace as he tossed a dagger back and forth between his hands, spinning it in midair. When Jules realised Emma was watching him, he hastily rearranged his expression into a smile.

"Bet you five dollars that you can't do it three times."

Emma scoffed, flicking her blonde hair out of her face and raising an eyebrow at him. Julian knew that she couldn't resist a challenge when he decided to throw down. "You're on, Blackthorn."

He smirked. "Centre of the target, remember."

"Yeah, yeah."

She held out her hand, and Jace placed the dagger he had been playing with in her waiting palm. He winked at her as he did so, and Emma felt herself blushing furiously again. She wasn't usually so ridiculously girly, but, by the Angel, it was _Jace Herondale_. She could be forgiven.

Emma snapped her wrist back again, and the dagger hurtled into the target, dead centre. She turned to Julian and flashed him a smug smirk. "That's two."

"I can count," he replied, waggling his eyebrows at her. "You'll never make the third one, though."

"By the Angel, they're as bad as you and Alec," Clary said to Jace, who laughed.

"Want to bet?" Emma challenged Julian.

"I thought that's what we _were _doing."

"Raise the stakes, then." She danced across the room and yanked the dagger free from the target before levelling the point at Jules's face. "Unless you're scared I'll actually win."

"Fine. What do you want to bet?"

Emma considered for a moment. "If I win... you have to do my chores for a week."

Jules grimaced. He hated chores almost as much as she did. "Okay, but if I win, you have to do mine for a _month_."

"That's not fair!" she protested.

"Thought you were confident?" Julian shot back.

Jace leaned closer to where Clary sat. "I think they're worse than me and Alec," he stage-whispered to her.

Emma held Julian's gaze for a few seconds, a clash of brown and turquoise. "Fine," she said finally.

Julian folded his arms and leaned back against the wall, looking immensely satisfied. "Have fun doing the dishes, Em."

"Don't get too cocky, Jules. You haven't won yet."

He waved a hand in a broad gesture. "On you go, then. Prove me wrong."

Emma gritted her teeth and squared up to the target for one last time. Shaking the tension out of her shoulders, she pulled her wrist back and drew in another deep breath. She _really_ didn't want to have to do Julian's chores.

All eyes were on the knife as it arced through the air this time. The sunlight streaming through the window flashed against the blade, momentarily blinding Emma to its progress, and she heard it sink into the target as she was still blinking black spots from her eyes. When her vision cleared, she saw that it had found its mark – there was her knife, quivering in the centre of the target for the third time.

Clary and Jace's eyes moved from Emma's face to Julian's as she spun around with her arms held aloft in wordless celebration.

Julian groaned.

"Yes!" Emma crowed. "In your face!"

"Bite me," Jules muttered, but he couldn't quite hide his smile.

Clary and Jace exchanged a swift, significant look, and then promptly burst out laughing.


End file.
